I’ve mentioned in earlier posts about new opportunities to make photos interactive using digital watermarks. Today’s smartphone cameras are finally reaching the point where they can be used to detect and read digital watermarks in printed images used in magazines, newspapers, etc. This allows readers to use their mobile phones to link from the printed page to video, the Internet, promotions… all kinds of stuff. We see similar capabilities with campaigns using 2-D barcodes, but for the “image purists” out there, digital watermarks basically become an invisible barcode so you can get the same experience without having an ugly symbol cluttering up the image.

Last week, autofacil (a popular car magazine in Spain) launched its first issue using interactive images. 

This PDF shows just the watermarked pages and how they introduced the new user capability (see page 7). The publication used a 2-page spread to educate their readers on how to use their mobile phones for video tours of the cars and more. Both editorial content and advertisements were digitally watermarked and linked to a wide range of pay-offs. I’m hoping to learn more soon on what the initial reader response was.

As the publishing industry continues to figure out how to survive, it will be interesting to see how readers respond to these mobile campaigns. It certainly seems like a great way to bridge the print and online worlds — especially when you’re sitting in the airport or on the subway without access to a computer.